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UC-Berkeley researchers David Wemmer and Jeffrey Pelton examine data obtained from the 7-ton, 900-megahertz magnet seen in the background. The magnet, one of only a few in operation worldwide, is housed in the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facility at Stanley Hall and will be used by researchers throughout Central and Northern California.

David Gelles

East Bay Business Times contributor

(Page 3 of 4)

Construction workers in hard hats lumber through throngs of undergrads walking to class. The percussive hits of a jackhammer echo through lecture halls. These are the sights and sounds of a University of California campus under construction.

At every corner of Cal's verdant campus, new structures are going up and old buildings are being renovated.

Anchoring the improvements are two very different developments. On the northeast edge of the campus along Hearst Avenue, the new headquarters for the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) is taking shape.

A looming structure squeezed between three older buildings, the Sutardja-Dai Hall as it will be known, is named after the husband-and-wife team of Cal graduates who donated a sizeable chunk of the

$130 million needed for construction.

A seven-story office tower, with offices, cafés and classrooms totaling 145,000 square feet, the CITRIS headquarters will foster interdisciplinary work on energy, health care and the environment.

"Anything that's developed in this building will be given out to society for free," said Scott Shackleton, assistant dean of the college of engineering, who added that the building was aiming for an early 2009 opening.

On the campus' south side, the $38.7 million Underhill Parking Facility and Recreation Field is nearing completion. Located on College Avenue between Haste Street and Channing Way, the underground structure will offer a much-needed 1,000 parking spots to the congested area around Telegraph Avenue. On the roof of the parking lot will be an artificial turf field for soccer and field hockey games.

Not all development on Cal campus is welcome, however. To protest the construction of a sports facility adjacent to Memorial Stadium, environmentalists have taken up residence high in the branches of a stand of coast live oak trees that would be removed in the construction.

The Student-Athlete High Performance Center, which was promised to Cal football coach Jeff Tedford, is seen as an important step toward re-establishing Cal as a major player in college sports. And though the university has promised to plant three new trees for each one removed, protests continue and lawsuits have been filed against the project. The presiding judge will not rule on the lawsuits until after Cal's final home football game on Nov. 10.

Still, the Cal campus has already played host to two high-profile openings this school year. October saw the opening of the 68,000-square-foot C.V. Starr East Asian Library, a new home for nearly

1 million volumes of Chinese, Korean and Japanese texts, woodblocks and scrolls.

Located across the lawn from Doe Memorial Library, Berkeley's largest, it is the first building in the United States designed specifically as an East Asian Library, and one of only a handful in the world.

"This will be an intellectual commons for scholars of various disciplines," said library Director Peter Zhou. "The new building will unite three collections that are now scattered on campus."

Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and constructed by McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. at a cost of $46.4 million, the library is clad in large bronze screens, cast in China. "The sheer design is very impressive," said Zhou. "It's a very beautiful building with functionality in mind. It takes care of all of our needs."

Inside, a skylight diffuses sun throughout the building. A panoramic window on the second floor overlooks a pond with smooth river stones. The Henry Fong Rare Book Room includes a rare book vault, equipped with high-tech security systems and HVAC controls. "This will provide a first-rate facility for our treasures in the collection," Zhou said.

And in September, Stanley Hall, a new $162.3 million building for interdisciplinary bioscience research, opened its doors to the university community. Eleven stories tall and designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP, Stanley Hall will be home to bioengineers, biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, with room for 650 faculty, students and staff members. Fittingly for an interdisciplinary building, the money needed for the building came from a combination of state and private funds.

For such an expensive building, Stanley has atypical origins. In the late 1990s, three professors - Paul Gray of electrical engineering, Graham Fleming of chemistry, and the late Daniel Koshland Jr. of molecular and cell biology - began advocating for a new building that would encourage cross-discipline collaboration. Gray, who at the time was dean of the College of Engineering, had the administration's ear, and less than a decade later, Stanley Hall was completed.

Meanwhile, three miles west of campus, in Albany, renovations at University Village are nearing completion. Cal's main site for family housing, University Village is a 58-acre complex with 760 apartments and townhouses. The housing units, the community center, café and child-care center all are being refurbished, as well as being given seismic upgrades.

But for all the noise around campus, this isn't the busiest building boom in recent memory. "Six years ago we were renovating a million square feet," said Shaff.

That building boom resulted in nearly $100 million in seismic upgrades for four main buildings - Hildebrand and Latimer Halls; parts of the College of Chemistry; the Samuel L. Silver Space Sciences Laboratory; and Barrows Hall, the center of social sciences on campus.

At the same time, construction was under way on the $4 million Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, created for music research, and work at University Village was just getting going.

"I wouldn't characterize this as a particularly busy time," said Shaff. "We've had much busier."

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